Far be it from me to defend Brazil, Brazilians or how Brazilians ‘do shit’ but last time I checked they were a pretty sophisticated nation. I don’t think they need to be lectured to by basket case Europeans about not looking after the worlds main pulmonary ahem..no offense to my lovely European compatriots

How’s Macron coming along with the Notre Dame rebuild?

The real problem of humanity is that we have Palaeolithic emotions, medieval institutions and godlike technology - Edward Wilson

THE RIVER BASIN at the center of Latin America called the Amazon is roughly the size of Australia. Created at the beginning of the world by a smashing of tectonic plates, it was the cradle of inland seas and continental lakes. For the last several million years, it has been blanketed by a teeming tropical biome of 400 billion trees and vegetation so dense and heavy with water, it exhales a fifth of Earth’s oxygen, stores centuries of carbon, and deflects and consumes an unknown but significant amount of solar heat. Twenty percent of the world’s fresh water cycles through its rivers, plants, soils, and air. This moisture fuels and regulates multiple planet-scale systems, including the production of “rivers in the air” by evapotranspiration, a ceaseless churning flux in which the forest breathes its water into great hemispheric conveyer belts that carry it as far as the breadbaskets of Argentina and the American Midwest, where it is released as rain.

In the last half-century, about one-fifth of this forest, or some 300,000 square miles, has been cut and burned in Brazil, whose borders contain almost two-thirds of the Amazon basin. This is an area larger than Texas, the U.S. state that Brazil’s denuded lands most resemble, with their post-forest landscapes of silent sunbaked pasture, bean fields, and evangelical churches. This epochal deforestation — matched by harder to quantify but similar levels of forest degradation and fragmentation — has caused measurable disruptions to regional climates and rainfall. It has set loose so much stored carbon that it has negated the forest’s benefit as a carbon sink, the world’s largest after the oceans.Scientists warn that losing another fifth of Brazil’s rainforest will trigger the feedback loop known as dieback, in which the forest begins to dry out and burn in a cascading system collapse, beyond the reach of any subsequent human intervention or regret.This would release a doomsday bomb of stored carbon, disappear the cloud vapor that consumes the sun’s radiation before it can be absorbed as heat, and shrivel the rivers in the basin and in the sky.

The catastrophic loss of another fifth of Brazil’s rainforest could happen within one generation. It’s happened before. It’s happening now.

I hope that the 10s of millions of poverty-stricken migrants from a devastated and arid Latin America after another fifth of the forest has burned will end up in your neighborhood in the US.

According to the OP there's been a 10% increase in fires from 2016, when no one cared because a right wing guy wasn't in office. That people like Macron are concerned about this and want to respond with things like sanctions while their countries have real problems is truly ridiculous.

Panic hysterically over a non-issue. According to the New York Times most of what's burning is land that had already been cleared for agriculture, not old growth forrest.

"only 12% of death certificates have shown a direct causality from coronavirus, while 88% of patients who have died have at least one pre-morbidity - many two or three." - Professor Walter Ricciardi, Director of the Department of Public Health

I hope that the 10s of millions of poverty-stricken migrants from a devastated and arid Latin America after another fifth of the forest has burned will end up in your neighborhood in the US.

If you are truly against global warming and climate change the last thing you want is a 3rd world person to migrate to a developed country.3rd world people have very small carbon footprints, however once they migrate to a western capitalist nation their carbon footprint goes up massively. If you want to reduce global global warming you should be against massive migration to the west by poor people. That will massively increase carbon emissions and poor people are not conscious about climate change.

Organizations like Greenpeace and World Wildlife Fund have warned that if the Amazon reaches a point of no return, the rainforest could become a dry savannah, no longer habitable, let alone remain vital and biodiverse.

What's happening to the Amazon is terrible, but this is alarmist bullshit.

“Always remember, others may hate you, but those who hate you don't win unless you hate them, and then you destroy yourself.”

Hong Wu wrote:According to the OP there's been a 10% increase in fires from 2016, when no one cared because a right wing guy wasn't in office. That people like Macron are concerned about this and want to respond with things like sanctions while their countries have real problems is truly ridiculous.

If the event itself is bad, then paying attention and criticising it, regardless of the reason behind, is a good thing. If you call them out now just because you think they are acting politically, you are, I'm afraid, extremely naive.

"Organizations like Greenpeace and World Wildlife Fund have warned that if the Amazon reaches a point of no return, the rainforest could become a dry savannah"

What's happening to the Amazon is terrible, but this is alarmist bullshit.

These big green outfits are "heavily-staffed well-funded not for profit corporations each with budgets in the hundreds of millions of dollars a year, offices in Washington, DC and other major cities, highly paid executive directors, and a staff of lobbyists, analysts and marketers."

It's a huge industry that thrives on alarmism and fearmongering, all its power and influence and money comes from hyping the threat of immanent environmental collapse, so it's not surprising the gang green cartel never came across a theory about eco doom that it didn't instantly seize on and leverage for more power and money and influence. It works in exactly the same way as organized religion, from the apocalypse to the offering plate, it's the exact same scam just operating under a different guise.

"only 12% of death certificates have shown a direct causality from coronavirus, while 88% of patients who have died have at least one pre-morbidity - many two or three." - Professor Walter Ricciardi, Director of the Department of Public Health

Rupert Darwall is a strategy consultant and policy analyst. He read economics and history at Cambridge University.

Darwall's Green Tyranny traces the alarming origins of the green agenda, revealing how environmental scares have been deployed by our global rivals as a political instrument to contest American power around the world.

Drawing on extensive historical and policy analysis, this timely and provocative book offers a lucid history of environmental alarmism and failed policies, explaining how "scientific consensus" is manufactured and abused by politicians with duplicitous motives and totalitarian tendencies.

"only 12% of death certificates have shown a direct causality from coronavirus, while 88% of patients who have died have at least one pre-morbidity - many two or three." - Professor Walter Ricciardi, Director of the Department of Public Health

How bad were fires in the previous years?While the number of fires in Brazil is at its highest level for almost a decade, the data suggests that Brazil - and the wider Amazon region - may have experienced more intense burning in the past.

An analysis of NASA satellite data last week indicated that the total fire activity in 2019 across the Amazon, not just Brazil, is close to the average when compared with a longer 15 year period.

Looking specifically at Brazil, figures from Cams going back to 2003 show that the total CO2 equivalent emissions, used to measure of the amount and intensity of fire activity, are at their highest since 2010.

So I guess the question is why are you so desperate to hype a slight uptick in regularly occurring wildfires?

"only 12% of death certificates have shown a direct causality from coronavirus, while 88% of patients who have died have at least one pre-morbidity - many two or three." - Professor Walter Ricciardi, Director of the Department of Public Health

So you think people should be able to burn the homes of others with impunity, because everything will be “fine”.

I guess everything will be fine.... for you.

How bad were fires in the previous years?While the number of fires in Brazil is at its highest level for almost a decade, the data suggests that Brazil - and the wider Amazon region - may have experienced more intense burning in the past.

An analysis of NASA satellite data last week indicated that the total fire activity in 2019 across the Amazon, not just Brazil, is close to the average when compared with a longer 15 year period.

Looking specifically at Brazil, figures from Cams going back to 2003 show that the total CO2 equivalent emissions, used to measure of the amount and intensity of fire activity, are at their highest since 2010.